Enterprise Envoi

After this season, new episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise will not be made for UPN. Immediately after the series was cancelled on February 2, Star Trek producer Rick Berman was talking about a pause of at least three years before another Star Trek series might begin.

The ratings for Enterprise hadn't improved enough, and the new Friday lineup on the Sci-Fi channel was further draining audience away. Before cancellation was announced, syndication rights had been sold to Enterprise for next year, and its first season is to appear soon on DVD.

Cancellation of the fifth Star Trek series at the end of its fourth season came at a nadir in the fortunes of the franchise. The last two feature films have not met expectations, and sales of nearly all kinds of Star Trek merchandise are down. The original series episodes are seen in mostly off-peak time periods on the Sci Fi Channel, while The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine repeat on afternoons surrounded by auto races and wrestlers on the former TNN, now Spike TV, which may be going through yet another transformation (its prez resigned, citing disagreement with its direction.)

There seems to be more going on than changes in television, or even in the most appropriate media for the future of Star Trek, and this cancellation signals more change. Yet there is still a lot of life in Star Trek and its audience, as responses to this cancellation are already beginning to reveal.

But that is fodder for future posts. Enterprise will be in production for another month or so, and we will be seeing new episodes until May. I've posted in detail my appreciation for the first nine episodes of this season. In one of the sadder ironies, the second episode since the break, "The Observer Effect," was one of the best of the series, ranking with better episodes of any Star Trek series, even though it was also the lowest rated episode to that date.

Remaining episodes should tie Enterprise closer to the original series and other Star Trek, as producer Manny Coto promised, ending with an episode planned to be "a Valentine," according to Berman, who is writing it with Brannon Braga.

There was some rumor and remains speculation that this will include appearances by Next Generation characters, and perhaps characters of other Star Trek series. Now that there's no reason for me to wait to be asked, I may as well spring my idea: although it's been established that Zephrane Cochrane is believed dead, his younger "First Contact" assistant, Lily Sloane, could still be alive in Archer's time. That in fact is the premise of a story by compatriot Morgan Dash, which you can find here.

As for Enterprise, several fan groups are already advocating that another network continue it. (In fact, one might wonder why the Sci Fi Channel counter-programmed against Enterprise so aggressively on Friday night.) We recall that in science fiction, there are always possibilities.

But given the economics of television, it is more likely that production will shut down. With no new series in sight, it will mean that a production team that has worked together on Star Trek for decades will dissolve. That more than anything will signal the end of an era. As an admirer of their work, and as someone who will continue to enjoy its fruits, I am thinking mostly of them now.

Of them, and those who've joined Star Trek to work on Enterprise: a cast of not only fine actors but fine people, it seems, in the best Star Trek tradition. There must be a different kind of difficulty for those who ascended in the last year or so, such as Manny Coto and the Reeves-Stevens, and who made their mark in such a short time.

For the next several weeks they can concentrate on making the best episodes possible, while appreciating the privilege of working and being with each other, for as long as it lasts.